Rethinking What It Means to Prepare

Do I excavate the foundation before you arrive, or do I wait until the team has assembled?

It wasn't even a question before yesterday.

My plan had been to begin excavating the foundation for a permanent ceremonial sweat lodge on the Spring Equinox, roughly six weeks before the workshop itself. I intended to have the foundation fully prepared before anyone else arrived. Because I’d chosen to forgo using a tractor, I assumed it would take weeks—digging a three-foot-deep, twelve-foot-wide hole by hand is no small task. Still, this wasn’t a burden I was resigning myself to. It was a meditation that I actually looked forward to.

Simple trenches for an above-grade SuperAdobe dome complex in Kanab, Utah. Photo credit Jaechon Anderson

Over the course of a long conversation with Mike and Kathryn Sharp at White Sage Landing, I found myself questioning whether the foundation should be excavated ahead of time or whether that work should happen together, in full view, with everyone present from the start. One approach prioritizes control and predictability. The other asks for trust, shared responsibility, and a willingness to let the timeline unfold on its own. Most difficult of all, it requires humility...

I’ve suddenly found myself reconsidering an assumption I’ve carried for years: that preparation happens quietly in advance, and that people arrive once the ground has been made ready. The question isn’t whether that approach works. It does... The question is whether that's the right way to begin this particular space.

I’ll admit that the first path is comfortable. It's what I'd planned. One wheelbarrow at a time. Long hours with a spade in quiet. I genuinely enjoy that kind of work. But comfort and familiarity don’t necessarily make something ideal.

As I shared my plans, Mike offered that he and Kathryn would like to offer a pipe ceremony to the group to open space for the work. That single gesture called my entire timeline into question.

The pipe ceremony should come before the land is disrupted, right? Does a building begin when the land is cleared? When the first shovel-full of soil is turned, or when the first brick or timber is placed?

Last year, I asked Mike and Kathryn to host a private ceremony before the Buffalo Dome workshop. This was for three purposes: to ask permission of the land, to request guidance and protection, and to offer my gratitude and my respect. Without taking that step first, I wouldn’t have been able to proceed beyond placing a survey stake while keeping a clear conscience. That progression feels just as important to me now as we begin the Spiritadobe Dome.

Sitting with the moment of victory until it has been fully experienced. Photo credit Jaechon Anderson

In my experience, building these domes has always felt like a race against time. It’s a highly enjoyable race, but it's a race nonetheless. "Will we finish on the day projected?" I felt a familiar anxiety rise up—the fear of missing an imagined deadline, and the fear of risking judgment if it appeared that I hadn't properly prepared. I wondered whether I was willing to postpone the excavation until the first day of the workshop, when everyone had arrived.

Kathryn, presumably unaware of the fear I was carrying, spoke directly to it. She said that those who walk the higher paths are often asked to see the risk clearly—and then choose it in service to the highest outcome. To trust the possibility that something unforeseen and even miraculous might unfold.

I want to walk the highest path. As I listened, I began to understand more clearly what that entailed.

During the Buffalo Domes workshop, I kept private much of what was happening behind the scenes. I tended the site in the early mornings, before anyone arrived—smudging with sage, making offerings of cornmeal and flower essences, asking the land itself to work with us. At the time, that discretion felt almost institutional. Earthen building has lived on the margins for a long time, and this would be the first of its kind for hundreds of miles. Local trust and buy-in felt essential. I wanted the work to be visible and grounded, so I kept most of my own practices out of view.

What I didn’t fully recognize then was the tension I was carrying: asking for support while quietly hiding the request itself. Praying for help, while hesitating to let the community see that vulnerability.

Over the course of those two weeks, that tension began to soften. I found myself weeping—often and unexpectedly—in gratitude. Gratitude for what was unfolding within the group, and within my community at large. Gratitude for the place I was beginning to see for myself within these communities. Gratitude for the support that had already arrived, from sources that I hadn’t anticipated.

Pulling door-forms. Photo credit Jaechon Anderson

Only in hindsight did I understand what had been happening. The building, the workshop, and the personal ceremony I was quietly tending alongside them weren’t separate things—they were intertwined from the beginning.

Mike asked me a simple question: would I deny that opportunity to those who are coming now?

With that question, the decision clarified itself. The highest path is to allow others to have the same experience. And that requires something of me. It requires accepting help at a foundational level. Literally. Becoming more humble. More transparent. Allowing myself to be seen, and allowing others the gift of giving.

Kathryn added yet another layer of reasoning to the decision. As a ceremonial space, this structure already exists beyond time. To remain stable while accessing that fifth-dimensional field, grounding is essential. It's the same principle that is at work in much of QiGong or Kundalini Yoga. Excavating the foundation together would help to anchor the group as the building begins.

If everyone is to be invited into a pipe ceremony at the threshold, then the work itself can only begin once everyone has arrived.

None of the ceremony that accompanied the Buffalo Domes was done in secret, but much of it was done in private. This time, I am opening the door. I admit that doing so makes me feel exposed. But I also know that those ceremonial acts were fundamental to the depth of my experiences last year. And for that reason, I feel a kind of giddy reverence that our conversation wove itself toward this realization: that the ceremony begins in the same moment that the intention is set.

Kathryn says that this is the Lakota way, after all. The community gathers from the beginning—to seek, to find, and to weave the willow rods together. The Inipi ceremony does not begin when you enter the sweat lodge; it begins when you gather to build it.

And so, our ceremony will begin there as well.

Eric J. Reed

The Duke of Dirt

Armchair philosopher, earthen builder, and aspiring regenerative agriculture practitioner at @aquarian.acres